The new season of Go Back to Where You Came From should have gone deeper, says Di. Source: Supplied

I REALLY want to talk about Dallas and how much I hate remakes but somehow love this one, but instead I feel impelled to discuss Go Back To Where You Came From.

The timing could hardly be better, really. Just on Dallas quickly. Oil and everything. Although who stands under a squirting oil geyser? They didn't even carry on like that in The Beverly Hillbillies, and they were hillbillies. There's a guy who huffs paint near my house, and watching John Ross Ewing and his girlfriend and his crew at the start tonight when they're all excited about the new well, it just reminds me of him. What a show though.

The heft Larry Hagman brings. And spark. JR would be camp if he wasn't so frightening. I don't think there can be anything harder to write than a believable soap, and Dallas, the original, set the standard. Early days obviously, but the new one's very strong.

And by strong I mean there's standing-up sex, backstabbing, lying, double-crossing and the Cattle Baron's Ball. This is going to be my new Revenge.

So. Go Back To Where You Came From. We know what to expect now - racism disguised as "Australian values" that gets recalibrated by the shock of seeing starving babies. Of course it's upsetting, but it's also manipulative, and I resent having my emotions toyed with to achieve an outcome, especially since I was on the other side in the first place.

But the most depressing thing about Go Back To Where You Came From is it makes no difference. As important as that first series felt last year, it wasn't. It was entertainment. It made a lot of noise, it won trophies, it went away. It had no impact on government policy. None. As we've just seen.

It didn't have to. But I kind of felt cheated, like everyone involved had been put through the wringer for no reason. I was sceptical about having a celebrity version this time round, but they're not divas, they're not even that famous, mostly. And in fact, it's a bit of an opportunity lost: Michael Smith used to have a radio show and now he doesn't. Peter Reith used to be a federal politician and now he isn't. Angry Anderson wants to run for a seat in Parliament but hasn't yet.

I'm glad there's room for a show like this on Australian television, but this second series needed to go deeper. One of the people on this, when pushed, says he is going to go home and ask his wife if they can adopt a boy he meets in Somalia. I almost laughed. It's like they've gone to the RSPCA. The naivety of it all is just idiotic. I wonder if they're wishing now they'd put Malcolm Fraser on the plane?

A NOTE ABOUT RELEVANT ADVERTISING: We collect information about the content (including ads) you use across this site and use it to make both advertising and content more relevant to you on our network and other sites.